Emily & Herman Read online

  “Rereading Livy’s History of Rome I was taken, appalled, by the scale of murder and destruction and retribution that was taken for granted in those days and we are talking about the empire and culture that has most influenced and civilized our own!”

  “I’m getting lost, Nathaniel. I thought you were making an argument for the existence of a Christian God.”

  “I am. I do believe in Him. I have to. The alternative is too terrifying. But where do you stand?”

  “Was Jesus the Son of God, whatever that means, who died for our sins and was he born of a virgin? Is there really a heaven and hell and purgatory? Did Moses actually part the Red Sea, did Christ raise Lazarus from the dead? Did Christ himself return from the dead after his crucifixion and ascend bodily into the heavens? I confess the only saint I have any sympathy for is Doubting Thomas.”

  “So, you are not a Christian.”

  “There is not a culture I have read about, studied, or lived amongst that does not have a creation myth and a roster of deities to back it up and to establish a moral criterion from, to try to explain who we are and where we have come from. So clearly, to my mind, the religious instinct is as real as the ones pushing us to hunt or to mate. Everything I see in nature speaks to me of a divine presence, so in the end, I do consider myself a religious man. To think or be otherwise would be both arrogant and foolish. But as for being a Christian, choosing the Christian fable over all the others merely because of where and to whom I was born, does seem a bit arbitrary. I had this very same discussion with Austin Dickinson who shares these doubts. Why must there be a singular, true religion that negates all the others?”

  “Surely they cannot all be true.”

  “Not in the particular, no, but just as surely they all contain common elements. And that is as far as I have gotten in meditating upon such transcendental matters my friend. All this weighty talk makes me thirsty.”

  Hawthorne ignored this last comment and Melville wondered whether it was due to the man’s level of involvement in the discussion, or embarrassment from having run out of drink, or perhaps it was just plain New England stinginess.

  “The Bible is a damn fine book,” Hawthorne said, thus increasing Melville’s suspicion that the explanation was one of the latter two.

  “I concur.”

  “The Quran, the Upanishads, they don’t come close.”

  “I disagree with you there. Though I am not an expert, what I have read of those two texts, in translation of course, contain passages of great beauty. Good books are written by good writers.”

  “But the Bible and the Quran purport to be the word of God, handed down, like the Ten Commandments.”

  “I think we can agree that to be an exaggeration.”

  “What the deuces do I know?” He looked away, a weary expression upon his face. “I’d forgotten how dangerous it can be conversing with this heretical side of you.”

  “Dangerous? Now that is an exaggeration.”

  “Coaxing me to think of things I’d rather just leave be.”

  “First of all, it was you who broached the topic to begin with, and second of all you are as heretical as I am, Nathaniel …”

  Hawthorne laughed while wagging a forefinger back and forth, disavowing the claim.

  “… Oh yes,” Melville continued. “It’s just that you are better than I at keeping all of these matters separate in your heart and head.”

  “I’ve a less volatile temperature than you I suppose. It’s like you leap first and only contemplate it afterward.”

  “Is there anything left to drink?”

  “Oh, dear. I am sorry. There must be. Port for sure.”

  “Just a glass if you don’t mind before I ride back home.”

  Hawthorne left and then almost immediately returned carrying a very polished silver tray with a crystal decanter half filled with port and two matching glasses.

  “I must say,” he said, pouring them each a measure, “from what you’ve told me, I do regret having missed making the acquaintance of this Spanish duchess. What did you make of her? I noticed you greeted me today speaking in Spanish. Perhaps it’s something in the air.”

  “T’was pure coincidence, I assure you.”

  “Coincidence, the mortal enemy of tale-tellers like ourselves for whom everything is connected in one shape or form.”

  “Now that is an interesting thought. You are correct. I cannot recall a single time, in anything I have written, that I have chalked up to chance.”

  “Since Homer, and before him, we like things to fit, to be predestined, to have meaning.”

  Upon hearing this further elucidation of an insight that possessed implications more profound than even Hawthorne might allow, Melville realized that the duchess and the salutation offered to his friend and small son that afternoon had, in fact, been related. In his barn that morning, during a lull in his writing, the chase of Moby-Dick in high dudgeon, he had masturbated himself sending jets of jissom into piled bales of hay. Something in what he had been writing combined with his general state of sexual frustration, one that had only been exacerbated by his recent affections for Emily. To arouse himself he fantasized about her, resorting to his Nukuheva scenario, swimming naked with her, holding her derriere in his hands, invading her relentlessly as she cried out for him. And as this torrid novelette sailed on, charting its own course, the duchess appeared as well, making for a threesome, inducing all manner of Kamasutrian combinations until he was spent.

  He had not thought about the woman at all, hardly, and neither had he been unduly attracted to her considerable charms when he met her. Nevertheless, she had emerged from the recesses of his brain, ardent and without explanation, a symbol for him perhaps of wanton womanhood. Later on in the day, and surely because of it, he had spoken with his mother about what she could remember of his father’s stories about his travels to Spain. All of this, innocently and inoffensively had led to his choice of language when riding by and surprising Nathaniel and Julian at Love Grove. And from this additional insight, all pondered over in the fewest of seconds, he derived a conclusion. That things were often more related to each other than it might at first appear, so that it was worth the effort to examine what really transpires within one’s mind, and, that many crucial things in one’s life, and in the life of nature, happen by chance, to a degree of which humans found so frightening that they denied it and made up stories, myths, poetic explanations, religion itself for all he knew, to palliate the underlying terror of it all. He had laden his own tale of Moby-Dick with intimations of fate and destiny, describing all of the events in an almost biblical tone, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. But perhaps The Whale itself was the embodiment of the terror that surrounds us, the darkness we come from and return to, the vast cosmic indifference located on the other side of the sun and moon, the ease with which the sea can swallow us and the wind buffet us, the sadistic certainty of the grave awaiting us despite all of our attempts to breathe and to love.

  “She was not one of our Anglo Saxons.”

  “Well, certainly you would know a thing or two about that. Let’s see then … dark, curvaceous, masses of black hair, a peineta and red leather boots.”

  “No. She did have a peineta in her hair but she was blonde, an unusual golden blonde, with perfect skin neither dark nor white, nor even mocha. It was skin the color of a polished bone, of the best ivory used for scrimshaw—medium height—slender, not curvaceous at all.”

  “Are you sure she was Spanish?”

  “Not only Spanish but from Andalusia, in the south of Spain, from Seville, with an Irish ancestor tossed in. According to Susan Morewood, the girl’s family is older and richer than England’s royalty, to which she is also related. She wore black, a black dress, black shoes, black stockings, and a magnificent black and white shawl with lots of fringe. Stunningly beautiful and sensuous. Aristocratic and sensuous at the same time.”

  “Good God. And she threw herself at young Austin you say?”


  “She attached herself to him, quickly, if only to keep the other, older and heavier hounds at bay.”

  “And are you certain you were not howling along with them as well?”

  “She was too sure of herself. It made her less attractive to my eyes. And her taking it all for granted that she could have any man in the room made her instantly unappealing to me. But she was still a pleasure to behold.”

  One of the things he loved about Emily he realized just then, was the astounding mixture of self-confidence and insecurity she presented, blended together in such a way so as to make her irresistible for him. And she read! Like him, not because someone advised her to, not even for self betterment, not so as to acquire more interesting conversation, but out of passion. She was a creature of deep passions housed within a delicate corpus of New England propriety.

  “My Sophia has beautiful skin.”

  Ah, the burgermeister, thought Melville. At first nervously randy on this wifeless evening of bachelor talk, then threatened by the very woman he wished to hear about and fantasize about no doubt, finding her all too much for his provincial tastes, and then retreating into an idealized portrait of his wife. Though Sophia, Melville admitted, was fairer than his Lizzie. He had cast a semi-lustful eye upon her on more than one occasion, something she readily perceived and disliked him for, although he chose to interpret her disdain and displeasure as a sign of vulnerability toward him. But neither of them was the duchess. Neither of them was Faraway. Much more to the point, neither of them was Emily.

  The aesthetics of their nakedness, of his and his wife’s together, had become problematic over time and would only continue to do so. He saw no way back. This might very well be human nature. It might very well have happened with Emily too if they had been living together these past four years as man and wife surrounded by excessive family. But they had not, and he resisted the idea that such a thing would happen between them even though he had only been with her for a few days. Not all of the chemistry that flows between couples is the same by any means. He had seen and lived this in his own life and observed it over and over again in others. What he felt for Emily was rare and she herself was the rarest creature he had ever encountered.

  He had been married to Elizabeth Shaw, his sister’s dear friend, since his return from seafaring, and the idea of them being naked together in the light of day was no longer appetizing. It was a terrible thing to admit. He surmised that birthdays tended to steer one into these kinds of dark currents. Trying to look at things objectively, he recalled the Eden they had been banished from as it were, and had to confess it had never seemed that grand a paradise. Back at the very beginning of their courtship, he supposed it had been sufficiently exciting for the both of them. But it had not lasted for long. Their sexual encounters soon took place under the cover of darkness and had remained there where the eyes were censured, allowing the imagination to come to the fore. Since Malcolm’s birth, her body had changed significantly, it had begun to resemble his mother’s, everything had gotten rounder and thicker. His own physiognomy had not changed that much, but it would. He had noticed that Hawthorne’s Sophia had retained her slender frame even after the birth of their third child and she exuded a somewhat mysterious air that lent her an erotic hue. But she was stern too, sterner that Lizzie. Who knew what went on within their bedroom? It was difficult to imagine she and his friend locked in a compromising embrace with any of the intensity or abandon he had felt with Emily, or with the tenderness Lizzie was capable of when she rallied.

  He knew, at moments like these, that his relationship with Emily was doomed. He was married and committed to someone else who was about to give birth to their second child and Emily was not the sort of woman to put up with such an arrangement, at least for very long. And the society they lived in was very strict about such matters. Hawthorne was saved from all this sturm und drang, older, less impulsive, more fastidious, content to portray his marriage as a continuing love affair in a manner Melville found impossible to emulate.

  It was past midnight when he saddled up to leave the Hawthorne property. They were enveloped by the night, surrounded by rolling countryside that had settled into its ripe and verdant pose of summer. Though hard on his friend at times, he realized at moments like these, on the verge of bidding him farewell, how much Hawthorne meant to him. He had no other friends to speak of, no other close friends, and certainly no one who truly understood what his creative life entailed.

  “Go slowly,” Hawthorne said, reaching up his hand to shake Melville’s. “No need to break the neck of a good horse.”

  “I shall try. And I shall come by again on the sixth, in the chariot, to pick up you and Julian, n’est-ce pa?”

  “We shall both look forward to it. Buenas noches.”

  Melville smiled in the dark and touched his hat in the same way he had earlier that afternoon. “Buenas noches.”

  Back out on the main road he hesitated for a moment, battling an impulse to ride all the way to Amherst. It would take him what was left of the night. He wanted to see her. Just seeing her would be enough. Just to watch her from a distance as she came out of the house and took a seat on the Dickinson porch unaware of his presence. Of course, he could invent an excuse to come by and call upon them and surely they would ask him to supper. But they would just as surely detect his feelings. He was not that cold an actor. And what to say to Lizzie and to his mother and sisters who were surely already worried sick about his continued absence at this late hour?

  He turned his horse homeward and off they went with just a bit of moon affording them both enough light with which to see the necessary minimum. A riot of stars hung over them, some that went shooting across the heavens whenever he looked aloft. The wonder and the vastness of it and the damp earth smells and the noise of the swaying boughs to either side of the road made of the journey a holy thing.

  When he permitted himself to think back upon the night he and Emily spent together, what he most remembered was a brief moment he would treasure for the rest of his days. It did not entail a kiss or anything overtly sexual. After sating themselves without resorting to coitus they had lain there together in the dark, in silence, astonished at what had occurred. And when they recovered speech they conversed in whispers for what seemed like hours until it was he who began to feel overcome by sleep. He turned away from her, almost involuntarily, eyes closed, sinking fast, and then felt one of her little hands upon his back. She rested it there, and then caressed his back, gently exploring and comforting him at the same time. The next thing he knew it was daylight and she was no longer at his side.

  Though surely a confluence of chance, it was nevertheless true that two weeks after riding back to Arrowhead that evening, and at the same hour, two other journeys of note took place. María Luisa Benavides y Fernández de Córdoba who had been detained in Manhattan for longer than she had wished, was asleep in her first-class berth aboard Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s magnificently refitted SS Great Britain, on what would be its final voyage back to London from New York. As the ship passed four leagues south of Montauk, thirty-five miles to the northeast, Fiona Flanagan dropped from the fantail of the steamship ferry The Empire State en route to Newport and New York. As María Luisa breathed calmly while dreaming of a garden path at a finca belonging to her family near Palma del Río, Fiona coughed and sputtered but did not cry out before descending into deep cold seawater east of Block Island Sound. Her period was three weeks late, Austin had ceased writing to her and she could not face her family. It was these two events, word of which reached her some ten days later, that gave Emily Dickinson the final excuse she was seeking to overcome her shyness and write a letter to Herman Melville.

  13

  Amherst

  Master Commandant,

  Since our return to Massachusetts, I have started and then destroyed numerous missives to you, sir—perhaps this one shall survive and prosper—Father and mother and sister Lavinia so enthusiastically embraced the tale my brother and
I were forced to convey that father threatens at least once a week to invite you and Mr. Hawthorne to supper—Imagine how strange a thing that would be!

  Our home—always a source of delight for me—seems smaller since the journey—like a remembered dream from childhood—But as the days go by, I have adjusted to it again, and what feels more dreamlike now is all that transpired since you and Mr. Hawthorne came a-calling. Then, just yesterday, as if to ratify reality’s wooden ruler, the sort used by punitive teachers to smack the palms of rebellious students—the bracing reality that puts all flights of fancy to risible shame—word of two concurrent events reached Austin that I feel compelled to share with you, if only to dilute their considerable weight from my own small soul.

  I believe I mentioned the young woman my brother felt such a strong inclination for—a colleague and fellow teacher—the Irish lass. It seems she has ended her life in the most lonely and horrific manner imaginable—leaping from the very same steamship you took us upon to New York from Fall River, the town in which this unfortunate creature and her family lived. Austin then received a note written by the Duquesa Mysteriosa, posted just before embarking on a ship heading back to the old continent—it seems both young women were in the same oceanic vicinity on the same evening, one perishing of her own volition far from shore, the other safely asleep under linen covers—or so I imagine it. And I imagine it often, and each time it sends a disagreeable spasm through me. Austin is most changed by it and has put aside all inclinations to be his own man and to strike out on his own and has transformed himself, much to the joy of my progenitors, into his father’s faithful heir, a molting I both understand but that, selfishly perhaps, saddens me. At least you, my friend, had, or I should say, grasped, the opportunity to sow your wild oats upon distant shores for a number of years before returning to marriage and family whereas it seems that Austin will only have had our escape to Manhattan.